Comments on: Appointing a new Researcher

By: newmania

newmania — Wed, 08 Nov 2006 12:14:50 +0000

Tayles – A superb post which I will hang on my wall. Steady authority in every sentence .I only wish I could emulate it .

How absolutely right you are.Please come back often

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By: Petra

Petra — Tue, 07 Nov 2006 20:22:20 +0000

I’ll see your James Blunt and raise you a Marilyn Manson.

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By: Tayles

Tayles — Mon, 06 Nov 2006 13:08:34 +0000

Mark Gamon -
Your comments reveal a deep distrust of power and any system that facilities or encourages its pursuit. This apparent concern for the plight of the underdog is somewhat undermined by the patronising assumption that people cannot look out for themselves. Take your comments on personal debt for instance. Yes it is piling up, but so long as people can pay it back, that’s fine and allows people to enjoy luxuries previously beyond the reach of ordinary folk. For some people debt is a problem, but I find the idea that some overweening moral guardian should protect us from temptation deeply offensive.

This instinct to regard people as helpless victims or powerful oppressors is sympomatic of the left-wing control freakery creeping back into public life. It legitimises all kinds of illiberal legislation and encourages the wretched victim culture that is prevalent today. Like all enthusiastic socialists, you conveniently ignore the crashing failure of left-wing politics, and nit-pick at the failings of the free market. Tell the Chinese and the Indians that they are wrong to embrace capitalism; they are enjoying enprecedented levels of prosperity. By contrast, all Marxist theory has delivered is authoritarianism, inefficiency, poverty and suffering.

I think that most socialists secret acknowledge this, so they’ve changed tack. Instead of claiming that Marxism is the best way to achieve a prosperous society, they’ve given up on the idea. Instead, they say that this aim is undesirable and brow beat us into regarding the pursuit of a better life as selfish and unfulfilling. At least in doing so they are showing their true colours as mean-spirited misanthropes.

Of course the old left-wing political terms still have negative connotations. No one is going to garner much support for killing off wealth and aspiration under the banner of a Trot or a Marxist. But call yourself an environmentalist and you’re onto a winner. Mother Nature has simply replaced the working classes as the Left’s focus of concern – a new underdog to shout for. Many socialists feel betrayed by the working classes. They liked them when they were powerless and put-upon, but their empowerment over the past 20 years has seen them rise from victim status to little capitalists. They have been corrupted by the pursuit of wealth and power that they once counterpointed.

I for one celebrate this shift in the balance of power. The cloth-cap-and-cobblestones worldview, with plucky workers battling rapacious fatcats, is an anachronism. It is telling that the people whose primary stated concern was delivering a better life for the masses seem disgruntled that this has been achieved through an ideology to which they are hostile. One might be tempted to believe that they are less interested in their declared goal than in the deprivations that the ideology they favour would have placed on everyone else.

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By: Jaq

Jaq — Sun, 05 Nov 2006 15:17:12 +0000

Stephen Jones said

remember Fleet Street was a literal open sewer until one day in 1857 when the wind changed direction, and those assembled in Westminster decided they’d better cover it up

reading some of the sunday papers, especially the columnists, it still is. And Westminster still tries to cover it up from time to time.

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By: newmania

newmania — Fri, 03 Nov 2006 16:13:41 +0000

… or indeed import public school boys to “visit the poor “, in London ,which they actually do .
I suppose its degraded version of the Grand Tour. Most of the reactions to otherness could have easily been written in advance of the expierience.

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By: Stephen Jones

Stephen Jones — Fri, 03 Nov 2006 15:59:54 +0000

As for all the good deeds that Boris’s prospective interns have done, that is because of the modern phenomenum of the gap year. If Jasper or Priscilla told their parents they wanted a bucketful of money so they could spend a year touring the world, getting sloshed, fornicating, and sniggering at the natives, then the odds of them getting it would be small.

However when they say they want to ‘connect with those less privileged than they are’ or ‘to make a difference’ then daddy’s cheque book flies open, even though the wash-a-leper brigade are not making any difference at all to anybody except to those who charge fat fees to organize the charade. Does anybody really tnink they need to import public schoolboys from the UK to look after the animals in Colombo zoo?

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By: Stephen Jones

Stephen Jones — Fri, 03 Nov 2006 15:43:05 +0000

For having an ancestor who brought water and sanitation to impoverished people during the days of the British Empire.

Perhaps you could give us further details. Considering that South India’s hydraulic civilization 2,300 years ago was of a standard the west didn’t reach till the second half of the nineteenth century (remember Fleet Street was a literal open sewer until one day in 1857 when the wind changed direction, and those assembled in Westminster decided they’d better cover it up), I can’t resist the suspicion that there was something rather presumptious in your forefather’s attitude.

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By: raincoaster

raincoaster — Fri, 03 Nov 2006 15:39:14 +0000

Some of us have seen beyond the pixels and actually know what he looks like…and what you do.

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By: newmania

newmania — Fri, 03 Nov 2006 15:34:41 +0000

I have many names .
. What on earth made you plump for the ludicrously implausible” Steven”. I admit it has suggestions of the gay cavalier , the soldier poet , the wild eyed romantic but you have gone to far . In real life no ones name is so thrillingly evocative as Steven . The very sound of it whisks me away to exotic times and places. ” Steven” I am walking around the dead of Culloden in the pitiless moonlight . “Steven” In white morning frost light I watch the Tsar and hid family crumple in blood and snow. ” Steven “…to much….. to much.!
The secret magic of the name Steven overwhelms my senses , Such powerful naming is for dreams and visions not for the prosaic life we have . Stevens leave that to their servants .

What gorgeous exquisite could wear such name ? It cannot be real ; reveal the dowdy plumage of your true life !

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By: Steven_L

Steven_L — Fri, 03 Nov 2006 14:55:45 +0000

I haven’t looked at prospects for a long time, thanks for reminding me K.

‘In the Mayoral application ,( mine currently posted on some Dick Whittington pretext),you were supposed to describe a challenge you have faced.’ (newmania)

There was that time when you couldn’t decide what name to use for your blogging.

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